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FIRST DUTY OF THE CITIZEN, r 



THE GRANDEUR OF THE STRUGGLE 
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FIRST DBTV OF THE CITIZEN. 



THE 



GEiNDEUE OF THE STRUGGLE 



AND ITS 



BESPONSIBILITIES. 



SOUTHERN PBINCIPI^ES. 

PHILADELPnlA: 

PKINXED .OK GBA^mTOUS BISXKIBXITIOH. 

1863. 



THE FIEST DUTY OF THE CITIZEN. 



If free institutions confer advantages, they also entail re- 
sponsibilities. The bourgeois of Paris can devote himself ex- 
clusively to his private business or pleasure, for all his interests 
are under the control of a strongly centralized government, to 
Avhich he looks for the regulation of the minutest concerns of 
his political existence ; and he knows that a change in the ad- 
ministration of public affairs is only to be accomplished by 
barricades and bayonets. The Austrian subject, under the 
paternal despotism of the Hapsburgs, pays his taxes, performs 
hi:i allotted term of military duty, and then can give his undi- 
vided energies to securing the bodily or mental necessities of ex- , 
istence. We, who boast that our mission is to deuionstrate the 
capacity of man for self-government, have a larger and a nobler 
sphere of action. Have we fully understood the nature of the 
task which we have undertaken, and are we properly discharg- 
ing the duties connected with it ? 

" The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." The saying has 
become so trite as to have lost its significance to the ear, yet 
it is none the less a truth of the deepest import. In a republic, 
no man, however engrossing may be his business, and however 
ardent his pursuit of gain or pleasure, can afford to neglect 
the duty of active participation in public affairs. Wo liave 
proved ourselves recreant to the trusts confided to us, and the 
result is to be seen around us. For years tlie intelligent, the 
educated, the disinterested portion of the community has been 
withdrawing itself more and more completely from the details 
and management of politics. Most men have felt a qualified 
interest in elections, have voted with one party or the other, 



4 

have felt grieved when bad men succeeded in obtaining office, 
but have shrunk from the exertion requisite to make their 
honest convictions felt in the management of public affairs. 
The needy and the desperate, the unprincipled adventurers 
"who abound in all large and prosperous nations, have not been 
slow to avail themselves of the opportunities thus offered, and 
to thrust themselves forward to occupy the place thus aban- 
doned by the honest and capable. Causes such as these react 
upon each other with constantly increasing intensity, until at 
length we, who regard ourselves as essentially a practical 
people, present to the world the anomalous absurdity of a coun- 
try where we pretend to govern ourselves, and yet where the 
business of government is regarded as degrading those who are 
engaged in it. 

This last assertion may perhaps provoke dissent, yet a mo- 
ment's reflection will confirm its truth to every man. What 
merchant proposing to engage a clerk would not hesitate if he 
learned that the' applicant was a "politician?" Visions of 
corner groggeries, of contaminating associations, of debased 
morality would naturally suggest themselves, and would pro- 
bably result in the choice of some safer assistant. What 
merchant would not run some risk of impairing his credit if it 
were known that he participated actively in the political move- 
ments of his district ? Who would care to give an important 
contract to a man who was known to be largely engaged in 
work for the city or state ? The first impression would be that 
he had either gained employment by dishonest practices or 
had speedily become familiarized with them, for every one 
takes for granted that corruption exists in all public business. 
Do we not express surprise when an independent and culti- 
vated man accepts position in our municipal councils or in our 
state legislature ? Have we not reached the point where every 
one is suspected of private motives in offering his name as a 
candidate before the people ? What wonder then that the men 
best fitted by education and position to aid in controlling public 
affairs shrink in disgust from the means necessary to secure 
success, and from the associations connected with office ? Surely 

/ 



when sucli are the prevailing sentiments, we may safely assert 
that the influences of the business of government arc degrad- 
ing to those who participate in it. 

The perpetuity of complex free institutions such as ours can 
only be secured by a virtuous and intelligent public spirit, and 
is utterly incompatible with existing conditions. Corruption 
in municipal affairs, corruption at Harrisburg, corruption at 
Washington, if not notorious, is at all events so firmly believed 
in as to work all the reflex evil that its existence could occa- 
sion. The life of the state consists in its legislative and exe- 
cutive functions, and where these are vitiated at the source, 
there can be but little hope for the body politic. Such is our 
present condition — our institutions shaken to the very founda- 
tion, and every man looking anxiously to the future, asking 
how we may best escape the punishment which is at last met- 
ing out to us the fit return for our sins of omission and com- 
mission. 

Great is the vitality of political organizations based on the 
immutable principles of right and justice. Ours has been 
sorely tried by our own remissness, yet it is not past remedy, 
and that remedy is so simple and so easy of application, that 
our disgrace is the more poignant that it has not long since 
Deen attempted. If a comparatively small jjortion of the inde- 
pendent public would devote to this subject a few hours in the 
course of the year, they could take the management of politics, 
municipal, state and national, out of the hands of those who 
make it the basest of trades, and who only hold it on sufi'cr- 
ance. It is simply our supineness that can enable them to in- 
flict on us the grievous wrong of a venal legislature or a cor- 
rupt municipal administration. Let us shake off that supineness, 
and we shall be surprised to find how fragile are the bonds 
that have tied the nation down, Avhile adventurers of every 
party have been disputing over its spoils as their birth-right. 

The foundation of our political edifice is to be found in the 
local sub-divisions of election districts. It is by manipulating 
these minute fractions of the community, that the professional 
politicians perfect their schemes and gain their ends. The 



6 

practical working of the elective franchise has rendered neces- 
sary a system of strictly party elections and conventions, un- 
known to the law or the constitution, which in effect regulates 
all political action. It is in vain that on the day of a general 
election the honest citizen, anxious to cast his ballot conscien- 
tiously, scans critically the various tickets laid before him in 
the desperate hope of making up one for himself composed of 
pure and capable men, when he has slothfully allowed the ma- 
chinery of nominations to be controlled unopposed by those 
who may have found their interest in selecting candidates un- 
worthy of respect or confidence. The trader in politics has 
not thus been idle. He has attended the ward meetings and 
has seen that judges and inspectors of election favorable to his 
views have been appointed ; he has nominated as delegates to 
conventions men vvho sympathize and Avork with him ; he has 
seen that at the delegate election in his precinct the ten or a 
dozen votes were cast, necessary to secure the return of his 
delegate ; and when the nominating convention meets, he feels 
safe that the candidates which it will present for popular suf- 
frage Avill be men who will reward him richly at the public ex- 
pense, for the trifling exertions which he has made in their 
behalf — men, it may be, who will gain, in a short tenure of 
office, the wages to support them through years of this idle 
work. The honest citizen, who fondly fancies himself a free 
and independent voter, is in reality the slave of these men, 
who count him as part of the assets of their political capital. 
They go over the assessors' lists and distribute the voters ac- 
cording to their political proclivities, and those who are as- 
signed to the democracy, or to republicanism are regarded as 
the personal property of the respective candidates, as thorough- 
ly as the horse that propels a cider mill — indispensable to his 
owner as a motive power, but utterly unconscious of the direc- 
tion or purposes of his labors. 

Reform must begin at the beginning. Since these prelimi- 
nary movements control all subsequent action, it is these pre- 
liminary movements that must be themselves controlled, and 
few understand how easily this would be accomplished by in- 



telligent concerted action. Men who have never attended a 
ward meeting or a primary election, have vague ideas concern- 
ing the mysteries of subterranean political manoeuvres, which 
they fancy cannot be comprehended or combated. This is an 
error arising from pure ignorance. The precinct is the political 
unit, and by controlling the precincts the sum total of politics 
may be controlled. Now, in the city of Philadelphia there are 
two hundred and thirteen precincts or election districts, and it 
is perfectly safe to say that four or five reputable, disinterested 
citizens in each precinct could control, for all purposes of good, 
the movements of their party therein. When the ward meet- 
ting of their party is called, let them attend it. Known to 
have no personal objects in view, their mere presence would 
have a most beneficial influence over the trading political huck- 
sters who are accustomed to manage these assemblages ; but 
they need not stop here. Each precinct nominates its own 
election officers and delegates, and this a few honest men will 
find themselves perfectly able to do. Let them then use their 
influence to see that their neighbors attend the delegate elec- 
tions, where usually from five to twenty votes only are polled, and 
they can with the utmost ease secure the formation of nominating 
conventions composed of men who are not aspirants for political 
preferment, and who will conscientiously endeavor to place 
before the people a ticket which no honest man need blush to 
vote for. All this is but the work of three or four hours, and 
by concerted action of this kind, a few hundred substantial 
men could change the wholo political asjject of the city. After 
the nominations are made, the regular party machinery will be 
necessary to bring out a full party vote, and those who begin 
to feel an interest in the success of their efibrts, can see that 
that machinery is properly worked. 

It will scarcely be denied that politics have at length reached 
a point where they must be rescued from the defilement of 
mercenary and unscrupulous hands, or the nation must perish. 
Each citizen must now be willing to admit his own dereliction 
of duty in the past, and to quiet his conscience by promises of 
amendment in the future. I have pointed out the mode in 



■which those promises can fructify into performance. To men 
whose daily dealings count by thousands, and whose minds are 
intent upon the mighty issues whereon hang the destinies of a 
continent, it may seem a paltry and unworthy matter to devote 
attention to the trivial intrigues of a petty precinct, yet they 
may be assured that in this way alone can their business in- 
terests be protected, and the national life preserved. If, after 
the sore experience of the last few years ; if, after writhing 
under the calamities resultant from abandoning politics to the 
management of venal and unprincipled men, there is not left in 
the community sufficient public spirit to demand from the honest 
masses the controlling influence to which they are entitled ; if 
the trifling sacrifices of time and attention requisite to this are 
not willingly rendered hereafter, then, indeed, are we degene- 
rate from our fathers, and the verdict of history upon our sui- 
cide as a free and self-governing people will not be long deferred 
or doubtfully phrased. 



The Grandeur of the Struggle and its 
EesponsibiUties. 

Generations, like individuals, arc born to different lots. Some 
to ease, others to hardship ; some to security, others to peril ; 
some to small duties, others to responsibilities well-nigh super- 
human. In reclaiming this world, God means that all shall do 
a part, generations as well as individuals ; but this part is not 
equal. It varies as He, in his wisdom and love, chooses to have 
it vary. It is not for man to question His ways. We must 
recognize His dealing, accept it, and conform to it. 

This third American generation has a peculiar lot. By an 
ordering of Providence which it did not at all foresee, it finds 
itself face to face with responsibilities such as have never be- 
fore been known on this continent, nor indeed in modern civili- 
zation. It is the pilot, in the engulfing storm, of the most 
precious argosy that ever floated — the warrior in the deadly 
breach of the great siege of the ages. If it falter, all is lost. 

The magnitude of our trust is beyond our power of concep- 
tion even in its grosser and lower aspects. The body of our 
people estimate it chieffiy by what is called the necessity of 
preserving the national limits. It is the Republic as stretching 
from Lakes to Gulf and from ocean to ocean, that especially 
stirs their blood. Their hearts throb at the thought that this 
most magnificent heritage, this continental arena for the de- 
velopment of national activity and power, is in danger. But 
how small and inadequate are the common notions of even 
these material interests ! In fact, no man has an understand- 
ing broad enough, or an imagination strong enough, to take in 
any but the boldest outlines of what will be the development of our 
Republic in population, in wealth, and in physical power, if its 
present theater of action is retained to it. We may cipher out 
progressive ratios, and soon read startling figures ; but mere 
numerals can give, at best, but a very meager idea of what will 



10 

be the living, breathing, working reality. It so far transcends 
anything found in history, that comparisons give no aid. The 
more we strive to body forth the potential aggrandizement of 
the Republic on its present domain, the more completely do our 
powers sink exhausted and baffled, and we can at last only say 
that as its great authors failed in their wildest dreams ade- 
quately to imagine its strength, even as beheld by us of the 
third generation, we far less can prefigure the reality that shall 
be developed in the indefinite series of future generations. 

So much for the merely material interests involved. They 
are of immeasurable value. Yet they are but the very lowest 
element at stake. They relate to the nation's adjuncts ; not to 
its essential life. The issue is not simply whether this Repub- 
lic is to exist on a larger or smaller scale, but whether it is to 
exist at jiH. The vital force itself is in peril. This rebellion 
strikes at just authority ; and without authority government is 
but an intermittent revolution, and the so-called nation but an 
organized mob. To give way to the present secession move- 
ment is to loosen every national ligament, and to put our body 
politic throughout henceforth at the mercy of every wild passion, 
of every sordid calculation. We are literally battling for the 
nation's life. It is a sort of war that hardly occurs once in a 
thousand years. Wars generally are maintained to vindicate 
national rights abroad, or to overthrow or reform natonal rule 
at home. Whether they do or do not succeed, the nation still 
lives. They are sometimes waged, as by our revolutionary 
forefathers, and by the Italian patriots of the present day, for 
independence, and an opportunity to originate a new nation- 
ality. But in our case it is to save a nationality already ex- 
istent and strong. With the comparatively small exception of 
Poland, there has not been a case like it in modern times. And 
who can calculate a nation's value ? The creation of one is 
the grandest and most difficult of all human achievements. 
There is not one, even the poorest, that has not cost unmeasured 
blood and toil — hardly one worthy of the name that has not 
required generations and centuries for even an imperfect de- 
velopment. A well-knit national organization, with all its 



11 

vital powers in full health and force, is infinitely the most 
precious of all earthly possessions. Its preservation is the 
most sacred trust that one generation can possibly devolve on 
another. The generation which betrays that trust, either by 
positive act or by default, commits an inexpiable wrong both 
against its ancestry and its posterity. 

But even this does not measure the responsibility of the 
crisis. Not only the physical unity of the Republic is at stake, 
and its very life, but what is of immensely greater consequence 
yet — the salvation of Human Rights. We are fighting not 
simply an American war, but a war for the race. It has been 
recognized, the world over, that our institutions are the supreme 
test whether sel-fgovernment is practicable or not. If our Re- 
public perishes in the very morning of its existence — if, with 
all the immense advantages in its power, it but adds another to 
the long list of democratic governments which have gone down 
in blood — the proof will be considered complete, that human 
freedom, as understood hitherto, is but a delusion. Power and 
privilege will make good their old claims over the masses, and 
will take out a new and indefinite lease. On the other hand, 
if the Republic overmasters this most gigantic rebellion of 
history, it will have demonstrated the matchless power of free 
government most irresistibly. It will give all prescription and 
oppression their finishing stroke. It will smite away from the 
champions of prerogative their last and strongest argument — 
ihat free governments, however suited to calm times, had no 
strength to outride a storm. We shall have practically proved 
a free government, the strongest and safest government that 
can exist, by its triumphantly weathering a tempest that would 
have inevitably shipwrecked any other. Our example, during 
its period of seventy years, has had a mighty influence through 
the civilized world. It has produced /orfy civil revolutions. It 
has banished kings, extinguished dynasties, jrashed empires a 
thousand years old to the verge of destruction, put the Supreme 
Pontiff to flight, planted popular banners upon every palace on 
the continent this side of Russia, trumpeted through Europe 
ideas such as before were barely lisped there above a whisper, 



12 

evoked new races into life, summoned constituent assemblies, 
framed constitutions, convoked parliaments, commanded armies. 
Under it, all the old helpers of oppression have been dying — 
feudalism, the divine right of kings, patrician prestige, papal in- 
fallibility, tradition, superstition, military conquest, foreign in- 
tervention, the balance of power, diplomatic craft. All this, too, 
in spite of the terrible anomaly, the shameful stigma, of our main- 
taining African slavery. Cleared of this accursed reproach, and 
accredited by the demonstration that a free government is not 
only the happiest but the strongest and most secure of all 
governments, we shall exercise an influence, after winning this 
contest, vastly beyond anything ever before realized. It will 
literally be irresistible ; and the progress of the race will thence- 
forward go on with strides of which hitherto we have had no 
conception. 

Such is a scant index of our responsibilities as the peculiar 
American generation which now stands in the breach to save 
the territorial area of the nation ; to save the essential life of 
the nation ; to save the very soul of the nation, Avhich is but 
another name for the spirit of Progress everywhere. It is im- 
possible for the human mind to gauge these responsibilities. 
They stretch almost to infinitude. Were the tremendous des- 
tinies depending, under Providence, upon our faithfulness, in 
this our generation, set before us in anything like their actual 
reality, the boldest and the calmest would shrink appalled. The 
exclamation from every lip would be, "Who is sufiicient for 
these things ?" The universal feeling would be that finite hands 
are not fit for such measureless trusts ; and the universal im- 
pulse a look for some miraculous interposition from heaven. 

But there can be no miracle vouchsafed. It is God's way to 
act in this world through human agents. He has elevated us 
to the dignity and the responsibility of being co-workers with 
him. We must stand to the lot he has assigned us, in the as- 
surance that if we are only true, he will give us strength as we 
need it. It is not necessary that we shall have a complete 
conception of all the consequences of our faithfulness or of our 
unfaithfulness. We could not if we would. But we should 



13 

penetrate our souls with some more solemn sense than they 
have ever jet attained of the infinite import of the struggle. 
Our souls should get enough of it at least to silence faction, to 
hush complaint, to brace up our constancy, to inspire fresh 
courage, to light uj) Avith a heroic joy all that we do and all 
that we endure — enough of it to make us realize that as we now 
bear ourselves, we shall stand in history as the most beneficent 
or the most maleficent of human generations, and as the most 
faithful or the most false in the eye of God. 



MOTTOES FOR LOYAL MEN. 

A friend of ours in the country has put the following pithy 
and emphatic sentences on a card and nailed it on his front 
door. He suggests that if others would do the same it would 
be one of the most expressive demonstrations of their loyalty 
that could be given : 

" The Success of the South will be the triumph of the 

WORST TYRANNY WHICH THE WORLD EVER SAW. ThE SUCCESS 

OF THE North will be the establishment of a nobler free- 
dom THAN the world HAS YET SEEN." — [F. W. NeWMAN. 

" My hopes of the future welfare and greatness op 
THE American republic avere never so high as in this, 
to superficial appearance, the darkest hour of its his- 
tory." — [John Stuart Mill, 

[Resolutions of the Ohio Legislature.] 

" We will have no dissolution of the Union ; 

" We will have no armistice ; 

''We can fight as long as rebels and traitors can; 

" The war shall go on till law is restored ; 

" We will never despair of the Republic." 



14 



From rvicbmond Examiner, May 28. 

SOUTHEEN PRINCIPLES. 

After the first half year, and from six months to six months, 
our character as a people has been decidedly rising in the 
world, until now a discerning public, to its own great surprise, 
almost loves us, and an astonished country begins to doubt 
whether it is the nineteenth century. For this improvement 
in the estimation of which we are now held, we do not thank 
the Spirit of the Age ; we thank our President and Gen. Lee, 
and the other noble chiefs, and our glorious army. If we are 
able to borrow money abroad, and the capitalists eagerly pour 
their treasure into our hands, it is not owing to any patronage 
or fostering care, or engagements of support from their respec- 
tive Governments ; it is because those capitalists know in their 
utmost hearts and souls (which are in their pockets) that such 
chiefs and armies will never be conquered ; that our independence 
is sure ; and that, therefore, the control of the resources of the 
country will be in the control of our own Government and 
people — not of the Yankee enemies. 

They are all perfectly certain in Europe that their debt will 
be duly paid by an independent people — not denied or dishonored 
by the conquerors of a "crushed rebellion. Just so, if we get 
war ships built in England, it is not that Lord Russell or the 
English Go-vernment encourages the transaction, but that ship- 
builders in Liverpool or Glasgow cannot be kept from doing an 
illicit stroke of business for a good employer. If the Confede- 
racy is at a premium, she owes it to herself. And so much the 
better. We shall be all the more free to run the grand career 
which opens before us, and grasp our own lofty destiny. Would 
that all of us understood and laid to heart the true nature of 
that career and that destiny, and the responsibility it imposes! 
The establishment of the Coneederacy is, verily, a dis- 
tinct REACTION AGAINST THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE MISTAKEN 

civilization of the age. And th's is the true reason why 



wc have been left without the sympathy of the nations until 
we conquered that sympathy with the sharp edge of our sword. 
For "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," we have de- 
liberately SUBSTITUTED SLAVERY, SUBORDINATION AND GOV- 
ERNMENT. Those social and political problems which rack and 
torture modern society we have undertaken to solve for our- 
selves, in our own way, and upon our own princij^les. That 
"among equals equality is right;" among those who are 
naturally unequal, equality is chaos ; that there are slave 

RACES BORN TO SERVE, MASTER RACES BORN TO GOVERN. Such 

are the fundamental principles which we inherit from the 
ancient world, which we lifted up in the face of a perverse 
generation that has forgotten the wisdom of its fathers ; by 
those principles we live, and in their defence we have shown 
ourselves ready to die. Reverently we feel that our Confede- 
racy is a God-sent missionary to the nations, with great truths 
to preach. We must speak them boldly ; and whoso hath ears 
to hear let him hear. 

If we had been crushed in this mighty struggle, it would have 
been truly a judgment of Heaven against us and against our 
cause. If we had gained that cause easily, and it were with- 
out sanctifying it with such a baptism of sacrificial blood, and 
if the policy of foreign nations had even induced them to in- 
terpose on our behalf, and so saved us from this agony and 
bloody sweat, our position at this day had not been so high and 
clear ; we should neither so fully apprehend the duty nor 
possess so completely the power to start in our proud career. 
We should then have had " spectators," patrons and inter- 
meddlers. We should never have lifted our thoughts up to 
the height of our great argument, and our national life would 
have been but a half life, an abortionate compromise. 

We start fair when our soldiers shall have sheathed their 
bloody weapons ; then will come the task of our sages and 
statesmen in building up society, and uttering by word and act 
the truths which are its base. And, thank God ! the Confede- 
rates have some statesmen and thinkers up to the mark and 
level of the situation. There are men in these Confederate 



16 

.r 
States who have long deeply felt and earnestly striven to ex- 
press, though timidly and speculatively, on what foundations of 
fact, with what corner agents of principle, our social situation 
was one day to be built up fair ar-^ bright. Noav is the time. 
Let them speak in no apologetic tone, nor place us at their 
peril, in any deprecations attitude. This people has won the 
right surely 'to be let alone.' They will accept no deduction 
in politics, in literature, in philosophy ; they will not follow 
but lead, not borrow but lend. They are more than content 
with their own principle of morals and way of life, and will 
stand upon it to the end, so help them God. 

The foregoing article contains the most outrageous doctrine 
ever promulgated in the name of civilization. 

Although it is but an expansion of the principle set forth by 
Alexander Stephens at the beginning of the rebellion, it is ex- 
pressed in blunter and more brutal language, and is a better 
embodiment of the feeling and intention of the dominant faction 
at the South. This faction has fallen under the scriptural male- 
diction on all who persist in systematic wickedness, and has 
really come to " believe a lie." The depravity of the slavehold- 
ing conscience has now completely vitiated the slaveholding 
intellect, and it has lost all hold on reason as well as right, on 
common sense as well as moral sense. 

A people that professes such doctrine in the name of religion, 
that impiously calls God to witness that it is content with its 
inhuman and atrocious principles, — such a people is the enemy 
of the human race. The nation is putting down a rebellion 
organized on such principles, is not only defending its own ex- 
istence, but is maintaining the most sacred cause of the rights 
of men, and is protecting the most precious interests of the 
whole human race. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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